


An Old-Fashioned Stakeout

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Prompt Fic, Stealth Crossover, holiday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 15:56:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stakeout has surprising results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Old-Fashioned Stakeout

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hardboiledbaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardboiledbaby/gifts).



> Written as a prompt for hardboiledbaby, who provided the following prompt: **Memory of a Christmas past.**
> 
> Warnings: No plot to speak of. References to another show. No beta.  
> Disclaimer: I don't own them. Not Sherlock and John, and not the other-referenced characters, either. Or their car.

  
  
This was not, in any way, shape, or form, the way John Watson had envisioned spending Christmas this year. When he’d thought of it at all (and he hadn’t, much), he’d pushed aside half-formed, dutiful thoughts of a familial visit with Harry, and instead entertained vague visions of spending the holiday at the flat with Sherlock.  Maybe watch a bit of Christmas telly, or coax Sherlock into playing something holiday-esque on his violin, or maybe just enjoy a little too much of Mrs. Hudson’s excellent (and highly potent) eggnog.  
  
However he had envisioned his first Christmas with Sherlock, it had not involved freezing his arse off, crouched down in the passenger seat of an ancient tan Ford Sierra, half keeping an eye out for the allegedly-crooked officers they were trying to catch in the act, while listening with half an ear to Sherlock’s frustrated mutterings from where he slouched in the driver’s seat.  
  
He hadn’t even known Sherlock could drive.  
  
He really should have known better. About the driving, and about Christmas. After all, what was more Sherlockian than a surprising ability to do something John had never imagined he knew how to do? Or, for that matter, what was more typical of detective work than spending the holidays deep in the details of a case?  
  
All the same, this was better than some of the Christmases he’d had. Christmas in the Army hadn’t been so bad, surprisingly, even when on deployment. And most of his Christmases as a kid had been happy ones. They hadn’t always had much money for presents, but there’d always been something, and Dad’s singing, and Mum’s special Christmas pudding. But he’d had some awful ones, too.  
  
The one spent mostly in the hospital waiting room, Harry trying to keep him distracted by playing snap with him (even though she was old enough to not want to anymore) while they waited on word about Gran, who had lain so grey, gasping, and still on the couch pull-out when they’d thundered down the stairs Christmas morning. That had been awful. Gran had survived that first attack, but she hadn’t lived to see the spring.  
  
The first one where he’d had no home left to go to, his parents both dead, Harry elsewhere, and him in medical school, too strapped for funds to even go out for the night. The only bit of cheer in his student apartment had been one of his childhood toys, one Harry had given him when he was seven. A metal model car, new then, but long since battered by years of playing hard with it. Its original paint had faded from bright-red to a pinkish-grey color, but the white markings she’d carefully added with typewriter correction fluid had remained vivid. It had made him smile, that miserable Christmas, and it made him smile again just thinking about it and remembering the many Saturday mornings he’d spent racing it around the floor in front of the telly as his favorite heroes had driven it around the streets of their imaginary American city. He’d kept that toy as a good-luck charm on his desk at school, and later in his kit in Afghanistan.  
  
He’d lost that toy car a few weeks before he’d been shot. He should have realized then what was coming.  
  
“…but that doesn’t make sense,” Sherlock snarled, breaking into John’s train of thought. “The question is, who can we trust?”  
  
The words leapt out of his mouth before John’s brain could engage enough to censor them. “The same people as always. Thee and me.”  
  
Sherlock’s head whipped around and he stared at him, face blank with surprise, grey eyes wide.  
  
John could _feel_ himself start to blush. That just made it worse. The silence stretched between them until John made himself break it.  “Um, sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt. Just…it was nothing, forget it.”  
  
Sherlock continued to stare for a minute, and then a small, genuine smile lit his face. The next moment, John’s jaw almost hit the floor as Sherlock spoke in a deadpan, dead-accurate Brooklyn accent. “Don’t sweat it, Blondie.” Then he _winked_ , the same wink he’d given John the day they’d met at the lab at Bart’s – and, John realized, a cousin of the wink the dark-haired television detective had cheekily given _his_ partner, on John’s favorite childhood cop show.  
  
John swallowed, distantly wondering if Sherlock too had spent Saturday mornings watching BBC Five, or if…never mind. It didn’t matter. What was important was that Sherlock _understood_ – and he was waiting for John’s reaction. He swallowed again, and gave it:  
  
“Right on, partner.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted December 17, 2011


End file.
